The Flood Read Free Page A

MRAP.
    As Brady and Reyes had enthused, this was no ghetto hoochie, but rather the Cadillac Escalade of MRAPs. So they had at least gotten some benefit from not killing Zorn, the deranged Command Sergeant Major and last survivor of Camp Lemonnier. They’d gotten some seriously hardcore transport.
    Even if Henno wasn’t quick to admit it.
    And, anyway, it appeared they had learned something – by knocking the dead down before the MRAP reached them, Noise was keeping them from piling up in front and obscuring their view. After a couple of nerve-wracking wrong turns and reverses, they finally found themselves on the road south out of town. This led up into some foothills that perched looking down on the coast – and as they descended the back side of them, they could see laid out very clearly what was at the bottom.
    A bridge.
    And that bridge was a total parking lot, completely blocked by cars and trucks – only some of them upright.
    Brady slowed as they approached.
    Once again… there was little choice.
    * * *
    “Why the hell can’t we just bash through that, too?” Fick asked. He’d stuck his head up front both to scope the situation, and to confer with Handon.
    “We could bash through the vehicles. But I’m a little worried about what happens to the bridge underneath.”
    Brady concurred. “That bridge may or may not be rated for a thirty-thousand-pound truck in the first place. And with all the other vehicles already on it, never mind the stress and jarring of us shoving them all off…”
    Handon got up, swinging into the back and pushing Fick ahead of him. “Okay,” he said. “Everyone dismount and push out.” Someone was already opening the hatch. “Ali on overwatch, Brady and Reyes pull front and rear security. Everyone else gets to work clearing the bridge.” Almost before he’d said it, they were on the ground getting to work.
    Juice said, “You do know none of those vehicles are going to start?”
    “Yeah, but they’ve all got wheels. And they’re virtually all small and light.”
    “Except for that one,” Juice said. He was pointing at a big six-wheeled cargo truck that was on its side, sitting half on and half off the bridge at its other end. It looked as if it had slid into position, pushing cars ahead of it.
    Handon acknowledged this. “We get the other vehicles cleared, then we winch that one out of there.” He was already swinging around to the rear of the MRAP. He wanted a look at the hill behind them – not far over which Berbera still swarmed with dead. And he could already see the tops of distant heads cresting the hill. Naturally, they’d been followed. So the clock was ticking – yet again.
    But Handon could also already hear Ali taking suppressed shots from the roof. How the hell she got up there so fast, he didn’t even know.
    Coming back around, he took a look down the slope that swept underneath the bridge. There was a white Chevy Tahoe down there on its roof, riddled with bullet holes and bad scorch marks. It was also surrounded by a veritable mountain of destroyed dead – now rotted down to skeletons. It looked like they had all been converging on the rear of the vehicle.
    Handon couldn’t quite picture what had gone down there.
    But he was glad he hadn’t been around for it.
    And they didn’t have time to worry about it anyway.

Little Velociraptors
    Somalia - Bridge South of Berbera
    “I’m sorry, but I’ve seriously gotta take a shit.” Predator was singlehandedly dragging a badly clapped-out pickup truck off the bridge, and now pushed it over the lip of the slope. It rolled away toward the trees below and picked up speed, and he started walking down after it. “Be right back.”
    He didn’t talk about it (obviously), but Pred had been having tummy trouble since not long after they found themselves on the carrier. When he snuck down to the hospital to get checked out, Doc Walker had told him it was almost certainly the diet on board – too much rice and